


numerology

by kangeiko



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Firefly
Genre: Crossover, F/F, femslash06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-28
Updated: 2006-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:41:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in the language of the lords of kobol, eight is an inauspicious number.</p>
            </blockquote>





	numerology

**Author's Note:**

> Gift for jennyo for femslash06.

*  
_part the first_  
*

She woke up naked, and frightened. There was a doctor bending over her, and tubes were hooked in to her arm and across her chest.

"Ma'am?" The doctor's voice was pleasingly low-pitched, brushed with an accent that sounded vaguely familiar. "Ma'am, can you tell me your name?"

She wanted to. There was something truly _nice_ about the young doctor, even though most of his face was hidden by a surgical mask. She really, really wanted to be helpful.

Then she saw what was left of her right hand, and she remembered why she couldn't remember, and she started to scream.

She didn't stop screaming until the drugs dragged her back under, into the black. Her hands - what was left of them - were curled into black claws, flesh burnt away to the brittle ivory beneath.

 

*  
_part the second _  
*

She woke up some time later - no way to tell the time - and there was a girl watching her with wide eyes from the corner of the dingy little room she'd mistaken for a hospital room.

"You've been eaten up," the girl said, with the air of one imparting great wisdom. Her long black hair looked like it hadn't been washed in a while. "There's nothing left but little scraps of gristle."

From afar came a certainty: there is someone watching her.

Black.

 

 

*  
_part the sixth_  
*

_There is someone watching me,_ Laura thought again, and tried to put the thought out of her mind. The odd, niggling feeling, first felt on _Serenity_ those many months ago, had gradually grown into an odd cloak around her sleeping form, until she could not remember waking without it.

She shook her head, trying to clear it. No ghosts here, not on this brightly lit world. Not even those she had brought with her could survive the onslaught of relentless blue.

It is the sky that is the most terrifying, in truth. The sky - as simple as that! Safe on _Serenity_, she had dreamed of all the places that might terrify her anew, now that her life was precious once more and no longer forfeit. She had never once thought that it would be a single upward glance that would wash away the remnants of her former (blessed?) self.

_She will not live to see the sky of the New World…_

The sky is forever blue on Osiris; bright and clear and full of promise. Laura watched it with heavy-lidded eyes each morning, bandaged hands raised across her face to block the thready morning light, so unwelcome on her vulnerable skin. She knew it for a childish fear, but she still wondered if, one day, when she closed her eyes, she would open them to find the sight of the bright lanterns and the bustle of commerce familiar; if one day she'll open her eyes and it would be _Galactica_ that was an oddly lit stage on a play half-finished.

_I have dreamed my life,_ she thought, and traitorously willed it to be true.

(If _Galactica_ was just a dream, if _she_ was -)

She sleeps for much of the day, her slumber oftentimes stretching from dusk 'til dusk again, waking only for those few rays of morning light, so unwelcome and so longed for.

She is waxing maudlin.

She is also going mad, besides. Little snippets of half-remembered memories thread their way through her, sharp and unyielding and she is not sure whether she is dreaming in black or blue. The varied colours of this world, with its heavy silks and bright, brittle-eyed children and low, sweeping sun, bleed together in her peripheral vision, even when she is asleep.

Mad. As mad as Baltar, if not more. What a pretty pair they would have made…

_Someone is watching her._

(And Laura Roslin, second chances be damned, had always, _always_ wanted to live.)

"Laura. You're awake." Inara was wrapped in deep blue silk, artfully draped around her torso in soft flutters of fabric. In her hands was balanced a silver tray; china; the gentle curve of the spout rising above one slender wrist as she steadied the teapot.

Everything about this world is soft and curved, like the padded rooms they built for their prisoners aboard _Galactica_. It is a lifetime away from those brief days inside the tight, barred cell, but still she could not help shivering at the memory; at the endless assailment of dreams and visions.

//_We're going crazy. All of us._//

And they'd believed him, the Lords of Kobol damn Baltar for being right yet again. All too few of them left, and stuck on those cramped little ships - sharp military lines and grey-on-grey, perfect Cylon camouflage - and they had slowly, bit by bit, started to unravel. So they had padded the brig, and hoarded what anti-psychotic drugs they could find and Commander Adama had -

//_The Cylons are not just going to keep chasing after us, Commander! They will have -_//

\- he had -

//_\- their Full Colours lined up for this!_//

"Laura?"

//_Listen to me! Commander - Madame President, please!_//

She doesn't remember.

"I - it's nothing, Inara. I'm sorry." She shook her head. "Won't you sit down? I was just admiring the sunrise. It's beautiful."

Inara smiled. "Yes. It is one of the things that I missed most when I was on board ships, forever in transit - no sunrises, no sunsets, no natural beauty to speak of." There was something wistful in her voice, and Laura -

//_I can prove it._//

Laura wasn't sure whether or not to pursue it.

//_She had smiled tightly. "Go ahead."_//

The feeling returned again, a hundred-fold - the crashing wave of uncertainty that had left her gasping and bright awake in the middle of the night, forcing her out of bed and into the chill of the dawn air.

//_Laura Roslin, fleet scuttlebutt had it, is never uncertain. Never. She could well be undecided, and you had best catch her at this point if you want her ear - but, once set upon a course, she did not waver. _

_Not even if it cost them Baltar. And Lee. And Kara._//

When had she decided to implement Baltar's eugenics programme? She does not remember. When had she first woken up here, under this clear blue sky, with crystals and silks and the lost softness of Caprica? She does not remember.

(And what colour should Caprica's skies be, if not blue and clear?)

She does not remember. She isn't certain. She cannot judge.

(Someone is watching her.)

Inara's hands were still over the thin china. "Laura?"

She's going to be sick, all across the sky-blue tiles beneath her feet.

 

 

*  
_part the third_  
*

When she dreams, she remembers not remembering and it's a relief. Her subconscious swamps through her; a slow, leisurely wave of agony sweeping through everything in its path. She sees the fire start, and the console explode, and she can't remember who was with her, only that they didn't look familiar; that they didn't matter to her. Hands hoisted her up and over and then the world was abruptly smaller as the pod door was sealed closed and she was ejected into space.

At some point, the pod was hit.

She remembers not remembering: the quiet, empty blank of trauma that she had been trained to overcome with those small children - _and point to the place on the doll where the Bad Man touched you_ \- had been something she had been so thankful to give up to others. It would be a new world, whatever happened, and with the amount of military police running around (_with the small, declining numbers of children,_ she refuses to think) that would be one job that would hopefully soon become defunct.

The teacher's place is to guard the children's emotional and physical well-being, from morning 'til night, 'til they could be given back to the welcoming arms of their loving parents.

(And she remembers filing petitions to have this child, or that child, or some other little one taken into care by the whole of Caprica, when their parents were deemed not parental enough.)

Had the number of social care petitions truly increased as her career progressed? Or was it simply an understandable misperception; revisionist history, viewed by an embittered teacher who had filled in too many forms and had watched all those children burn just the same as Caprica perished.

(And she had wondered if it had been divine retribution, despite appearances.)

At some point, she reminds herself, the pod was hit. A glancing blow, it must have been; the only explanation of how she could have survived and suffered so little damage.

_So little d-_

She glances down at the smooth pink skin of her hands and thinks, _I am dreaming_. Colours swamp her; mottled, swathed in black.

 

*  
_part the seventh_  
*

Inara brews her green tea and pours out the precious liquid into dainty blue tea-cups, smaller than the ones that Kara had favoured for her beloved moonshine. She helps Laura drink - and it has come to this, the great President reduced to sitting up in bed and needing help to drink her tea - and she sits with her, after. Blue again; floor tiles, and bed linen, and Inara's eyes are sometimes ringed with blue kohl. She smells of jasmine and ylang ylang, and it is on those visits that Laura knows she has been with a client.

"Inara? I would very much like to bathe."

On the eight visit, it occurred to Laura that she could convince Inara to stay. What would be the harm?

Inara's hair was very soft. Her hands were softer still.

 

*  
_part the fourth_  
*

The ceiling of _Serenity_'s Infirmary was black with shadows. There was hardly any light, and Laura was certain that Baltar was hidden in a corner somewhere, laughing at her.

Of course, it could have been the drugs they have been feeding her.

"Simon assures me that your recovery is progressing well," Inara said, her smile luminescent. "You'll be back on your feet soon."

"He seems most capable," Laura said after a moment, for wont of something to say. She felt nonsense pressing down on her tongue, but Laura Roslin had never babbled incoherently, not even when drugged. Not even - and she felt a disconnected a sliver of triumph - to satisfy Colonel Tigh.

(_Is he still alive,_ she wondered and, fast on its heels came the thought, _Who was Colonel Tigh, again?_)

"Yes," Inara said, and her eyes were suddenly watchful. "He is."

The dark-haired girl, River, was shadowed in the doorway, mouth twisted in what could have been a smile. "It's starting," she said with an air of finality, and spun on her foot with the grace of a dancer. Her hair, dark and matted, tangled in her wake.

(Laura was reminded, suddenly, of poor dead Baltar.

//_Listen to me!_//

Odd that he should be on her mind now, watching this girl not so much walk as _dance_.)

The feeling of being watched returned, a hundred-fold.

 

*  
_part the fifth_  
*

"Come with me to Osiris," Inara said eventually, when Laura was well enough to be moved.

Laura thought that the offer had no small amount to do with the malice with which the girl, River, stared into the Infirmary and refused to enter.

"Simon says that you are going to recover completely, there's no reason for you to stay here. And-" she smiled. "There is so much I want to show you."

_These people are a marvel,_ Laura thought, and clasped her bandaged hands together. Her hands were wrapped in thick bandages; stark whites and blues crisscrossing across her wrists and up her forearms, securely fastened just below her elbows. _Think what we could learn from them._ Think what the cities would offer, if there was such wonder on board a rickety old 'craft.

Someone would come for her soon, she knew. _Galactica_ \- if she had survived - or one of the others.

In truth, it did not matter. After being on _Serenity_ for three months, she was half-sick of the black.

 

*  
_part the eight_  
*  
_In the language of the Lords of Kobol, the number eight is an inauspicious number._

On the eight day of the eight month, Laura woke with the dawn and watched Inara sleep.

//_"Are you ready to listen to me now?" Baltar asked._//

Laura did not answer because, after all, there was no one there. Baltar was dead.

Outside, the skies were silent, bereft of any life. Laura wondered where the birds had gone; if they, too, shunned the inauspicious number.

//_You can't ignore me forever._//

But the doctor had arrived, and he required attention. "Doctor Li," she said, and indicated to a nearby chair. "Won't you please sit?"

_You can't ignore me forever, Madame President._

Yes, she can. Baltar is dead. She started counting out the silences in the head, in all the languages she knew.

_One - two - three - four -_

The doctor asked to check her hands; civility and formality intruding even here.

_\- five - six -_

Inara's long, elegant fingers curled around a lock of Laura's hair. "You're doing so well," she whispered.

//_I'll prove it._//

_\- seven - ei-_

"This is impossible," the doctor said, almost angrily. "This rate of regeneration is just - impossible."

_ -ght_

//_Full Colours._//

_It was Simon,_ Laura wanted to say, but words were crowding into her mouth, pushing past her tongue. _It was Simon_, she thought, and; _it was River,_ and _it was Inara_, and _it was Baltar_ \- because she was almost certain that it was Baltar who had guided her to the pod, although she had seen him die months before; it was Baltar who had called _Serenity_ to her aid; it was Baltar, finally, who had watched Inara wash her blackened body with torn blue silks, as if for a funeral.

It was Baltar who was sitting opposite them all, though Laura had seen him die and though no one else seemed able to see him.

_Radiation,_ Laura thought desperately. These humans must have been exposed to so much of it on their travels from Earth - they must have poor immune systems, or mutated genes, or - or _she_ had been dosed - it would explain the hallucinations - oh Lords, what if the cancer came back - what if it _didn't_ -

"Your people must be a marvel, Laura," Inara said warmly and reached out to stroke Laura's hair, coming to rest on the pulse beating too-fast at Laura's neck.

(Baltar smirked.)

Inara's hands - long-fingered and elegant - were fever-warm.

_At some point, the pod was hit._

She is a master of logic, as only a teacher can be, and adept at deception, as all politicians must be. And, though logic and deception, she told herself that she does not remember the impact, or the bright streak of fire that bloomed towards her. She does not remember falling against the plexiglass, face upturned to see the attacking ship.

She does not need to close her eyes to see it reform:

//_Sharp military lines, grey on grey, and _Battlestar Galactica_ in truncated letters across the side. _//

(She knows now that Caprica's skies are red, not blue; will always be red, as divine retribution demands it.)

"Are you going to listen to me now, Madame President?" Baltar said, that familiar arrogant smirk colouring his voice to a rich plum hue. "We have a lot of work to do."

_I'm going to take the bandages off, now, the doctor said from somewhere far away._

She made a sound that could have been a whimper.

Inara was still speaking, her voice a dull roar of murmured reassurances in Laura's ears as the bandages were pulled back; swathes of sterile white and surgical blue giving way to fresh, pink, almost-human skin.

Above, the sky was slowly reddening in brief flashes of distant fire. Instinctively, she started counting them out: six - seven -

Baltar was smiling. "It's starting."

\- _eight_ -

The colours come again; mottled, mainly black.

*

fin

**Author's Note:**

> References include Roger McGough.


End file.
